Perhaps there is hope for Great Britain

In a post called “The Inevitable Decline of Great Britain (Con’t)”, John wrote that “in Great Britain, the authorities have no idea what to do about the real problem, an endless series of murders and attempted murders by fanatics yelling ‘Allahu Akbar!’” And John is right.

However, the British public has at least a clue. A survey taken for the Daily Mail shows that almost two-thirds of voters in the UK favor the reintroduction of the death penalty for “serious terrorism offences.” The breakdown was:

[Death penalty] opponents never tire of saying that the United States keeps a penalty that Europe has rejected, as if there were something wrong with being different from Europe. (If I made an argument based on the practices of countries populated mostly by white people while ignoring those populated mainly by “people of color,” I would swiftly be denounced as racist. But the other side of the aisle gets a free pass.)

But it is not the people of the UK (or Canada) who have rejected the death penalty; it is the government. Close to two-thirds of the people are in favor, and more than twice as many are in favor as opposed. These numbers are comparable to the U.S.

We have the death penalty while Britain does not because our form of government is more responsive to the will of the people. It was designed that way.

So is there hope for Britain? Probably not. But there might be if it were more democratic.